by Sophia Lynn
Dario waved his hand as if he could make all of her frustrations disappear. She prickled at being shushed like a child, but for the moment, she subsided. Whether she wanted to or not, apparently, she needed to hear what he had to say.
“Your position after what the press is calling the ‘Christensen affair’ is murky,” he said. “I am not sure if you know, but most of the people involved in that particular bit of banditry are currently awaiting trial with the possibility of very long prison terms ahead of them.”
Bailey refused to let herself flinch. Instead, she met Dario’s eyes with iron resolve, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“You’re different,” he said. “Going through some of the records, it seems as if Christensen had issues getting an academic of your caliber out to Jabal. He’s been turned down by every one of them that he contacted, until he decided to dispense with appealing to greed and simply decided to lie.”
Bailey did flinch at that. When she looked back at how she had been brought on, she knew that there was something wrong. She knew that Christensen wasn’t telling her everything, but she had convinced herself that it was simply a part of getting her first big job in her field. That little voice had started screaming ever since she made it to the Sinn mountains with Christensen’s convoy, and she wasn’t sure it had ever stopped.
“So on one hand, we have a bunch of robbers who were looking to steal my country’s very history, and on the other hand, we have a press that is baying for them to receive the justice that they so richly deserve.”
Bailey wondered if she should drop to her knees and kiss his feet now. She wondered if she should beg for her life, or try to sweeten her plea by appealing to his ego. She did nothing. Instead, she only lifted her chin slightly, waiting to see what her fate would be.
“And here, in the Sinn mountains, we have an academic who was caught up in a web of lies that was designed to strand her in one of the most desolate mountain chains in the world.”
“Oh, what do you do with a problem like Bailey,” she muttered, and Dario smiled a little.
“What indeed. I think I should tell you openly that your embassy is interested in your release but wants desperately to avoid challenging Jabal. What was finally decided was signed off by the American embassy quite quickly.
“Some of the press sees you as an innocent victim, while others are painting you as robber queen who wants nothing more than to despoil the history of Jabal. So, it has been decided that you will work this dig for a while, under the custody of the person in charge of the dig, and doing what it is, after all, you do so well. This will placate the people who believe that you deserve some kind of punishment, and it will soothe those who want you out of harm’s way.”
Bailey stared at him, her hands clenching hard. Just a few hours ago, she was in one of the most modern cities in the world. She could have taken a cab and gotten on a plane that would have had her back on American soil in a day or less. Now she was… right back where she had started.
“You can’t be serious,” she said finally.
When he raised his eyebrows, her temper snapped so hard she was surprised it wasn’t audible.
“What are you—”
“Don’t you understand? They blindfolded me to bring me here! Christensen on more than one occasion threatened to make sure I wouldn’t make it home if I didn’t do exactly as he said! I thought I was going to die here… and now you’re telling me that there’s nothing I can do but work here some more?”
For a moment, she wondered if she saw some kind of sympathy on Dario’s face, but then it was replaced with something colder.
“The press corp in Jabal is evenly split on whether you should be delivered to the embassy or whether you should be put on trial. The more vicious members of the press are whipping up the populace. If you are free to go, some of those people will be incensed, endangering you, and even endangering my position.”
“So because you don’t want to deal with a scandal, I’m being held prisoner in the desert,” she spat.
“You are being protected against the dangers of a populace that wants you punished,” he snapped.
“I would be safe enough in the United States,” Bailey snarled, and apparently, that was where Dario had had enough.
Suddenly, she found herself pressed back against the wall, one large hand on her shoulder holding her still. He loomed above her, blocking the light from the window behind him and shrouding her in his shadow. For one delirious moment, she thought that she had pushed too far and that he was going to kill her then and there. It took her a few moments to realize he was talking very quietly.
“You are an American, so I will give this to you,” he said, almost conversationally. “Things are different here. Jabal is a progressive land. We cherish justice and compassion. However, we are a land that has been hard done by in the last century. Before we found our own strength and our own wealth in the oil underneath the sands, we were easy pickings for the world—for Britain, France, even your own beloved United States.
“These days, we trade and we smile and we give, but we are very, very careful about what is ours. It would have been better if you had fallen in with bank robbers, little American. It might even be better if you had fallen in with murderers. What Christensen did, and what you were a part of… there is no forgiveness for that. Not really.”
Bailey started to speak, but Dario made a cutting motion with his hand, forbidding it.
“Here it is. You will stay here. You will do the work that is assigned to you, and you will do it gratefully and competently. That is what is going to happen.”
He smiled a little, and that smile was a cruel thing.
“You are welcome to leave, if you can get across the desert yourself and to an airport. Feel free.”
She stared at him, appalled. “I would die in the desert—there’s no way that I can cross that myself. That’s blackmail!”
He shrugged easily. “If that is what you want to call it, of course. I consider it getting my country what it is due after collaborating with bandits.”
Bailey ran over her options, frantically searching for an answer. After a moment, she knew that there was nothing else to be done. He had trapped her as effectively as Christensen had.
“You can’t do this to me!” she cried, while being very aware that he could.
“As you say. Defy me if you like. You will see that it has consequences that you couldn’t have dreamed of in the United States.”
She acted without thinking. She reached her hand back and brought it crashing down against his face in a thunderous slap. The sound echoed throughout the trailer, and they both froze.
Bailey’s heart was beating faster. She thought for a moment that he would strike her, or that she would explode from fury and fear.
The air between them was charged with the electricity that occurs before a storm hits. She couldn’t breathe, but in that moment, she suddenly understood what this was between them, why she was angry, but why she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
I want him…
The thought was as brilliant and as unexpected as lightning from a clear sky. She had only a single moment to try to grasp and understand it, and then his mouth came down to cover hers, striking as swiftly and as brutally as an eagle would its prey.
The kiss was overwhelming, more passionate and more savage than anything she had ever experienced before in her life. Her rage and her fear didn’t turn into something else; instead, it transmuted, twisting until it became a red-hot desire.
Without thinking about what she was doing or what it meant, she wrapped her arms around his neck, dragging him closer. When his tongue parted her lips, she opened for him, drawing on it fiercely. This close, Bailey could smell him, no cologne, nothing artificial, only the clean scent of his skin, the wind of the desert, and something indefinably but absolutely male.
It was only a kiss, but it sent her whole body clamoring for him. She
was needy in a way that she hadn’t thought she could be. It woke her up, made her need so fierce and powerful that she could barely understand it.
Dario groaned into her mouth, wrapping his arms around her and pushing her hard against the wall. One hand caressed her face, while the other one reached for her robes.
She realized that he was going to pull them off, and suddenly her rage was back.
“No!”
She jerked her head away and shoved him hard. If he had been prepared, she didn’t think that she would have been able to move him at all. However, dazed by desire, he fell back a step, watching with eyes that were still lit with need.
“No,” she repeated, wrapping her arms around herself defensively. Without his hands on her, without the delicious comfort of his arms, she felt as naked as if he had stripped her.
“We’re not doing that,” she said, her voice low and vicious. “Unless there’s another price for my freedom that you have not made me aware of?”
He rocked back at what she was implying, stepping away from her quickly.
“You are an ungrateful brat who should be aware of the mercy she has been given,” he snarled.
“And you are an autocratic savage who wants to lord his power over people who are helpless to defend themselves,” she spat. “Are we done stating the obvious?”
Dario’s eyes went cold, and he nodded briskly. It was hard to tell that just a few moments before, they had been ravaging each other.
“If that is what you wish, we are done,” he said.
He nodded stiffly at her, heading for the door. She had just started to relax when he turned before he left.
“Lording my power over you… is that what you call it when you reach for me and when you seem as hungry as a woman who has not eaten in a year?”
She felt a red heat creep up her cheeks, because she knew he was right. Thankfully, before she had the chance to come up with a rejoinder for his comment, he was gone, slamming the door behind him so hard she could feel the trailer shake.
For a long moment, Bailey was simply frozen in place, staring at the place where he had been.
All right, she thought. Here I am. What am I going to do now?
Though she turned the thought over in her head, she couldn’t come up with an answer any more than she could when she had been here with Christensen’s men. The threat of blackmail hung heavy over her head. She couldn’t walk through the desert on her own. Once she got to Jabal, there was every chance the sheikh’s agents would meet her and bring her right back.
The only difference between her situation now and the one she had been in before was that now her captor seemed a great deal more dangerous.
Despite herself, Bailey reached up to touch her lips gently. They still tingled, as if they remembered the memory of Dario’s kisses, and they still ached for more.
She didn’t understand it. She had had known men before, though her affairs were often quick and hurried. There had never been much time in her life for romance, and for the most part, she thought that she could do just as well without. Dario was something different. She had never met a man as handsome as he was, but she wasn’t sure that that was all there was to it. Whenever they came close enough to touch, there was something in the air, something that could only be ignored for so long.
I must be careful, she told herself, but then again, if she had been truly careful, she wouldn’t be in this part of the world in the first place.
*
Dario stormed straight from the American’s trailer to the makeshift corral where the horses were stabled. A distinct whistle, two high and two low, brought a magnificent black mare out of the herd, tossing her head and eager to see what her master needed from her.
Without bothering with tack or a mounting block, Dario swung up on Fatima’s back, pushing her into a trot with a sharp command.
Everything made more sense when he was on horseback, especially when he was on Fatima, who he had raised from a foal. Her mother, Saraquel, was one of his father’s favorite mounts right up until the day she died.
He pushed Fatima along the line of the mountains, riding that line between shadow and light. He could feel her perfect gait, the wind in his hair, the world behind him, and still it did not bring him the peace it always had before.
Finally, when she was lathered and spent, he turned her with a motion of his knees back toward the dig.
With a slightly clearer head, he could think about what had passed between him and Bailey, and seen in a clearer light, he was disgusted with his actions.
He did not regret that she was here. He had spoken nothing but the truth when he said that there were some factions who were furious that she was not being tried along with Christensen’s men. He knew she was innocent of any wrongdoing, as did any of his men who had seen her panicked face before the attack, but that was hardly something they could convey to the people. If it took blackmail to keep her safe her, then so be it.
No, she was safe here, and hopefully, she would even do some good on this dig that had been uncovered.
Dario couldn’t forget the taste of her mouth on his, or the desperation by which she had pulled him close. He was not sure that he had ever had a kiss so sweet or a woman so lovely. Even though they had spent little time in each other’s acquaintance, he could imagine her face with crystal clarity. He had seen her terrified, he had seen her enraged, and right now, he might give half of his kingdom to see that face soften with desire and love.
It was foolishness, and above all, it was dangerous. He was a man who took his responsibilities to Jabal very seriously. He was the most powerful man in the country, and that came with responsibilities he could never put down. To have his judgment affected by a slip of a girl from the United States felt almost like a betrayal of his sacred trust.
Dario knew at the core of his being that the safest thing, the smartest thing to do in this situation, was to walk away. There was nothing keeping him here in the Sinn mountains, and everything to draw him back to Jabal. If he was truly invested in keeping the bewitching Bailey out of his mind, he would have given her a keeper who was handpicked to be compassionate and perhaps more than a little watchful. He would have returned to Jabal, and he would forget all about her.
He couldn’t.
He wasn’t sure he could have when she was lying so frail and unconscious at the hospital, and now that he could remember her kiss on his lips, he knew he couldn’t.
This is dangerous, he thought, coming down off his mare. Rubbing her down after their run soothed him, but it didn’t answer any of the questions that he needed answered.
All he knew for certain was that he could not, would not leave.
CHAPTER THREE
Bailey was both frustrated and amused to discover that her job for the excavation was nearly the same one it was when she was working under Christensen. She sat underneath a bright light, going over every pot shard and twisted piece of metal that was brought to her with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers. Most often, they would be placed carefully into the boxes that were marked for educational purposes. Jabal was a place firmly rooted in the past, she came to realize, and after so much of it had been stolen from them by colonizing forces, it was desperate to find some of it. These bits and pieces would go to schools and universities, allowing the young citizens to learn a little bit more about where they came from.
More rarely, she would find a piece that was especially fine, and she would set it aside while she went through the lot. After that, however, she would spend time with the rarer pieces.
Once it was a gorgeously blue faience bead that must have come all the way from Egypt. The bead’s journey, to come from the Nile delta all the way to the Arabian peninsula, would have been an impressive one indeed.
Another time, it was the figure of a leaping gazelle on a shard of white ceramic, an indication that the excavation was approaching the home (or more likely, the refuse pile) of someone of
means.
Despite her situation, there was a part of her that was intensely excited to be on the dig. History was being uncovered before her eyes, and she was a part of it. If she had been here legitimately, doing the job that she had thought she was doing, she would have been thrilled. Even as she was, there was pleasure to be found, joking with the men who brought her their finds, eating with some of the other scholars who, if they seemed aware of her status, did not say anything about it.
No, the real difficulty of her position was Dario.
After their last meeting in her trailer, she had not thought that she would see him again. However, she couldn’t seem to escape him. He was very much in charge of the dig, though his chief concerns were more about security than anything else. He met with the head archaeologist, discussing what could and could not safely be done, rode patrols with his other men, and came into the long mess hall to eat like anyone else.
Dario ended the day as covered in dust and as exhausted as everyone else, but despite this, Bailey could see there was something different about him. He held himself like a king, and it was clear that his people adored him.
After she had been working on the dig for almost three weeks, one of the other researchers mentioned something about Christensen, about how she hoped he would get his just desserts.
Bailey bit her lip, wondering what her new friend might do if she knew, but then the other woman reached for her hand, squeezing it with compassion.
“You must not think that we believe that you are cut of the same cloth,” she insisted. “We know that you are not.”
The acceptance felt like stepping into a warm bath; she was so relieved she could have cried. Bailey had known she was stressed with the idea of keeping the secret from the people she had been working with and come to like, but she had no idea the toll it was taking on her.
“Thank you,” she said, sniffling back her tears. “But how did you know? Why do you believe in me?”
The woman’s smile was kind. “Because Sheikh al-Nejem has told us so,” she said. “He was the man who led the raid on Christensen’s camp, and he says he was the one who found you.”